Vice-girls murder accused is son of a military policeman

Published on Thursday 7 February 2008 13:03

THE man accused of murdering five prostitutes is the son of a former military policeman, a jury was told today.

Steve Wright also has a sister who lives near where the body of one of the five victims was found, Ipswich Crown Court was told.

Wright, 49, of Ipswich, Suffolk, denies murdering Gemma Adams, 25, Tania Nicol, 19, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29.

Jurors have heard that the naked bodies of the five women, who all worked as prostitutes in Ipswich, were found in isolated locations near the town during a ten-day spell in December 2006.

Wright began giving evidence in his defence today.

He told the jury of nine men and three women that his father was in the RAF police and had been based in Norfolk, Malta and Singapore.

He has a sister who lives in Nacton, Suffolk. The remains of Miss Alderton were found near that village.

And he told the court that he was once in the Merchant Navy and worked as a steward on the QE2.

Wright, who wore a dark suit, white shirt and pale blue tie, was ushered to the witness box by two security guards.

Defence barrister Timothy Langdale QC asked Wright about the moment he was arrested on suspicion of the five murders on December 19, 2006.

Jurors have been told Wright felt "unsteady on his feet" and asked if he could sit down before he fell.

Mr Langdale asked: "Does that indicate you feeling as if you were about to faint?"

Wright answered: "Yes, it was."

He said a similar incident had happened when he had once been a prosecution witness and given evidence in court.

He said he had "problems" and added: "When I was in the witness box giving my evidence, I found the whole experience very stressful and frightening and I just came over all faint and I passed out."

He told the court he was born in Norfolk and his parents had divorced "many years ago".

His mother had moved to the US when he was young, and he had very little contact with her since.

Wright told the court he left school at 16 with no qualifications and started work in a hotel in Aldburgh, Suffolk.

About a year later, when he was about 17, he joined the Merchant Navy and started work on ferries in Felixstowe, Suffolk, as a "kitchen pot washer".

During that time he met his first wife. They were together for seven or eight years before the marriage broke up, he said. At the time, he was working on the QE2, first as a steward, then in the restaurant.

Earlier, jurors heard that in 2003, Wright was convicted of stealing 80 from a bar he was working in.

Prosecutor Simon Spence said that as a consequence of that conviction, a sample of Wright's DNA was on a police database.

DNA samples collected from sites where the bodies of some of the murdered prostitutes were discovered was found to match Wright's, said Mr Spence.